Functiodomo - New open and wireless home automation system based in Arduino

[castillo14]

Hello, I am going to present me. I am Jose Antonio Castillo Rodriguez. I am the principal developer of the home automation system called Functiodomo.

You can find all the information about the system in the next link: http://www.functiodomo.com

As you can see the web is written in Spanish, but you can access to the same English content pushing at the English flag at the top of the homepage.

Actually there is other topic about this system in the Spanish section of the forum. You can go there visiting next link: http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,92963.0.html

I can tell you about Functiodomo that the design of the system is oriented to have an easy, cheap and modular installation procedure as it is thought to be installed habited homes. It is based in open technologies and it let the control of the system since any gadget with a web browser, as the interface is running trough a web app. Another features of the system are easy integration with the existing elements of a built house, no previous works required and with an affordable user interface.

After 2 years if development, once it is fixed the foundations of the project, we have the aim of being an open development. We think that this is the best way to obtain an growth and future development. We have been publishing the How To of the project at the webpage http://www.functiodomo.org. Near in the future, we will translate all the contents of this blog.

Now, Functiodomo is working and you can see it in next videos:

Preparation of an showroom and control with and iPod touch: http://youtu.be/R5-J3ztKgXw

Control of the system since a computer http://youtu.be/hZ75qaeJd14

You can see more videos of Functiodomo at the Youtube channel of the system:
http://www.youtube.com/user/functionars/videos

Well, as introduction I think it is enough. I will continue publishing more information about Functiodomo system here, through this topic.

Greetings to the Arduino community. I will be waiting your opinions. Thanks.

[freedomotic]

Hi, it seems a very good project from videos.
Sorry, but I can't access to the sites. Maybe there is a problem with dyndns.
Regards

[spumanti]

Looks like an interesting project.  XD

3 questions:

• I could not see from the demo page, if there is datalogging options, and options for creating graphs with historical and realtime data?



• Will the functiodomo boxes be opensource; will I be able to create a node myself, using an arduino etc. -and make it talk to the functiodomo server?



• Is there an alarming / messaging module for the server, so it can send out notifications and/or alarms in case something unwanted happens (heating system fault, low temperature, etc...)

[castillo14]

Hi, it seems a very good project from videos.
Sorry, but I can't access to the sites. Maybe there is a problem with dyndns.
Regards

Hello freedomotic,

I have checked the websites "www.functiodomo.com" and "www.functiodomo.org" and I think they works. Please can you check if you are able to access them now?

I have to alert you that you only can access to the Functiodomo  blog or though the .org domain of Functiodomo or through the Spanish version of the web (basically because by the moment all the post are in Spanish), pushing the "Documentacion" option at the top menu. If you access to the English or German version of functiodomo.com, you can see that there is not the "Documentation" option on the top menu. I hope to add this section as soon as possible.

Anyway, thanks for your interest.

[castillo14]

Looks like an interesting project.  XD

3 questions:

• I could not see from the demo page, if there is datalogging options, and options for creating graphs with historical and realtime data?



• Will the functiodomo boxes be opensource; will I be able to create a node myself, using an arduino etc. -and make it talk to the functiodomo server?



• Is there an alarming / messaging module for the server, so it can send out notifications and/or alarms in case something unwanted happens (heating system fault, low temperature, etc...)

Hello Spumanti,

I will try to answer your questions:

About de datalloging options, graphs and historical data, I have to explain that all the Functiodomo modules (for us a module is the component that we are going to connect to control from one to three equipments) can have connected from one to six sensors (two by equipment). These sensors are sending their values to the CPU (the PC where we have the web app) and they are saved at the database. About the frequency of the data capture, it can be modified by software. Now we are working with the data to present to the clients reports about the realtime energy consumption as well as weekly and monthly consumption. But due to the modular design of the system, this can be changed.

About if the functiodomo boxes will be opensourced, I can tell you yes. I will go publishing all the documentation about the project. For now, I will go doing it through the the functiodomo.org web, which I'll translate as soon as possible. I would like to create a open software-hardware reference at the home automation world. I have not published the arduino code of the modules and the drafting documentation of the boards because I am testing the new components yet.

And about the alarm messages of the system, all the sensors that they can be connected to the modules, IR person detectors, smoke sensors, vibration sensors, luminosity sensors, humidity sensors... can be used in the system to make an action with their data signals. They can be used to switch on an automatic irrigation system, as it the case of the temperature and humidity sensors, or they can be used to send an email to the people that are administrators of the systems, as it is the case of the IR person detectors, smoke sensors (all the security sensors) and also, if it is necessary , to make a corrective action like open an anti-fire system, switch on the lights...

I hope that I have been able to answer your questions. Thanks for your interest.

[spumanti]

Hi Jose.

Thanks for your reply.

I will be looking forward to try out your system


Will it be possible to run the server as a virtual machine? -if so; it would make it really easy for you to create a master setup, and let people download it as an image or as a fully functioning VM.

[castillo14]

Hi Jose.

Thanks for your reply.

I will be looking forward to try out your system


Will it be possible to run the server as a virtual machine? -if so; it would make it really easy for you to create a master setup, and let people download it as an image or as a fully functioning VM.

Yes it is possible, but I have to check if it is not easier to install a XAMP server in Windows and install the web app at its right directory. I talk here about Windows because it works perfectly under linux and a LAMP server.

The only thing that I must to check is all the PHP used commands work ok on Windows.

[castillo14]

Some photos of the new PCBs of the functiodomo system.

Well, I have just published an article in our blog with some photos of the new PCB produced for the functiodomo system.
(If anyone wants to see it, you can read it at http://functiodomo.org/?p=134, but remember, for now it is in Spanish)

I have published some articles there and I will go translating them, but I have thought that it would be interested to show the PCBs. The photos are:

(module to control 1 equipment and connect until 2 sensors)

(module to control 2 independent equipments and connect until 4 sensors)

(module to control 3 independent equipments and connect until 6 sensors)

The last photo that I am going to show is about our personal modification of the Arduino PCB:

This PCB is 100% compatible with the Arduino platform, but it is adapted to our system, with some modifications like it works connected to 220 VAC and the digital outputs have 12 VDC. Also it has integrated a transformator and the communication Xbee module.

Now we doing some test to verify that everything is OK. As soon as the PCBs will be checked, I will publish more information about them.

P.D.: Anyone knows how to scale the images shown in the forum. As you can see, I do not know but I would like to know it  

[spumanti]

P.D.: Anyone knows how to scale the images shown in the forum. As you can see, I do not know but I would like to know it 

I have occasionally used http://www.imagebam.com/ for sharing pictures in forums. It will generate thumbnails of all the pictures, clicking the thumbnail will open the original picture.

[castillo14]

I have occasionally used http://www.imagebam.com/ for sharing pictures in forums. It will generate thumbnails of all the pictures, clicking the thumbnail will open the original picture.

Thanks. I will try it.

[monza]

Looks like a good project. Interested in automating my home at the moment so maybe I could help you guys out a bit rather than re inventing the wheel! Our electric is 240V 50Hz here in the UK so relays are generally quite beefy! got plenty of boards around to play with as well as a budget rf tx rx rather than the zigbee to keep costs down will this run on a standard arduino board?

[castillo14]

Looks like a good project. Interested in automating my home at the moment so maybe I could help you guys out a bit rather than re inventing the wheel! Our electric is 240V 50Hz here in the UK so relays are generally quite beefy! got plenty of boards around to play with as well as a budget rf tx rx rather than the zigbee to keep costs down will this run on a standard arduino board?

Hello Monza. Thanks for your interest.

About the electric current, there is not problem as I use a transformer that it is able to use UK specifications. I have designed a modified but fully compatible Arduino board to let me an easier installation. I want to talk to Arduino team to make them "official board".

About the wireless connection, I choose Zigbee because it has an easy configuration and it let me create a point to point extended mesh. But I have in mind to add different kind of wireless technologies as I would like to use this base for another cases. Its design lets me doing this modifications.

I also want to start to sell my boards to anybody that they can find another utilities to them. Surely, in October, I will have them ready to start its selling.

By the moment, I can show you how it appears:


One control board and one power board. It let us to control one electric equipment and to add two 5VDC sensors.


One control board and three power boards. It let us to control three electric equipments indepently and to add six 5VDC sensors.

Soon more news.

[Lakes]

How to resize an image http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,124358.0.html

[castillo14]

How to resize an image http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,124358.0.html

Hello Lakes. The problem is not to resize the real image. I know do it with a lot of apps.

The problem is that in this forum we can only use images from the web and I use the images that I have in our company web. That images are bigger that the space of the quote and I do not know how to scale an image from my web to the forum.

if I do not find any way, I finally upload scaled images to Flickr or Picassa and I will use them.

[Lakes]

Ah, Ok, I rescale my images before putting them on-line with photobucket or for forum images I use http://imgur.com/ as you can drag your images onto it and it gives you the correct bb code link to paste into the forum.